Sewing Cards

We have been doing a lot of travelling lately, which I love. A lot of it has been in the car, which I do not love at all. 

I have the demanding jobs of waitress/DJ/navigator to keep me busy, and crochet if I am very lucky. But my older daughter is starting to get so bored on these journeys and very cutely asked if she could crochet too. Now, like most mothers I am convinced of her genius, but even she might struggle with crochet at 3-and-a-half. 

What could she do on long car rides? It had to be something yarn-based. I remembered the cards we used to practice sewing on at school before we were allowed to graduate onto binca. Amanda Blake Soule in her 'Creative Family' also talked about them.

So we got drawing. She drew a picture:

A house on a hill.

And I did one:

The household goddess.

Then we did a couple together:

We drew onto card, which I then backed with another layer of card. I then punched around the edges with a hole-punch. It would be nice to make the holes smaller eventually using a paper punch, but for now bigger holes and bigger needles suit these little hands fine. 

I backed one with sticky-back plastic and this made it much stronger. 

Look what happened to the non-plastic backed one:

After some emergency porcine surgery I have learned the following for successful sewing cards:

• try to keep the outline of your cards relatively simple, no little limbs or parts that can break off.
• plastic on both back and front means that the edges are sealed off and will not fray.
• it also strengthens the card so that a cereal box-thickness piece of card is adequate.

New improved Peppa

A big plastic wool needle helps too, then you can give it to a child to sew away to their heart's content. Be prepared for lots of 'I'm stuck', but I was pleasantly surprised how long a little heart can stay contented for.